


Our Longed-For Bed

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 3x08, Bathing/Washing, Domestic Bliss, Episode Related, First Time, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Rimming, well something briefly resembling it anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 13:53:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6242008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Flint wishes for something he may call home again. Perhaps Silver is that something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Longed-For Bed

**Author's Note:**

> “[Captain Flint] is Odysseus trying to find his home again and trying to find his centre.” — [Toby Stephens](http://collider.com/black-sails-season-3-toby-stephens-interview/)
> 
> Partly inspired by 3x08, set during 3x08 and then after a presumed end of the season. Probably will get Jossed soon, but I left things deliberately quite vague anyway. Basically, let me just pretend for 4,000 words that Flint and Silver can have a happy domestic ending, even though I know they won’t and can’t.

He had been back, just once, after her death. After Charles Town, he had spent some time in Nassau trying to come to an agreement with Vane. The first night, he had returned to the house that he had shared with Miranda. Her death was still so fresh, then; he found himself often moving without thought, and he saw her everywhere, in light and in shadow. He had walked blindly into the house, found his way to the bed in the dark. The next morning, he had left again as soon as he awoke, and he did not come back.

Approaching the house now, with Vane and Bonny in tow, he was apprehensive. As if he might open the door and she might be standing there, no bullet hole in her head.

She was not.

The sight of everything in the house made grief well inside him. Dirty cups lay askew, with tea leaves still clumped at the bottom. He ran his fingers idly over a book, leaving lines in the thick dust. A torn linen dress was draped over a chair, waiting to be mended. He thought of the sumptuous dresses that Miranda used to wear in London, silk and gloss, richly coloured as ripe fruit and sweet confectionary, as beautiful to look at as they were to touch. Miranda had brought one with her to Nassau; it was kept in a chest and never worn.

If Vane and Bonny had not been beside him, he might have gone to the chest and retrieved the dress, to weep into it.

London was colder than Nassau, but Flint and Miranda had never managed to coax the same warmth into this house on Nassau, the warmth that once heated every corner of the Hamiltons’ house in London.

Flint wondered if he might ever find a peace like that again. Lying in Thomas’ arms in bed, wearing nothing but their loose white shirts, kissing until Miranda opened the creaking door and brought them steaming tea in beautiful china sets, smiling at the both of them. Miranda, playing the harpsichord in the drawing room as Thomas stood behind her and whispered in her ear and she laughed and stilled and turned around, drawing him down for a kiss; and Flint had watched it all, enjoying the slow curl of desire in his belly at the sight.

Bonny muttered something to Vane and left the house again; Vane paced restlessly, touching everything with his rough fingers.

Flint did his best to ignore it and set about lighting a fire instead.

* * *

Flint could hardly believe that he was finding himself at the house again after the chaos of the past two weeks, this time accompanied by Silver.

As they stepped into the house, Flint first and Silver behind, Flint lit a lamp that was by the door, and he turned and looked at the blood on Silver, dried splatters of it upon Silver’s temple and across his jaw, and he knew that he did not look much different. He smiled, a little. So much had changed over the past few days, weeks, so much that he could not have guessed or hoped for.

“Are you certain it’s all right for me to stay here?” Silver asked. It was not the first time Silver had asked the question, and Flint recognised that he had a good reason to be doubtful. Flint had not quite trusted that he himself could bear staying in the house again, let alone another person.

But here he was, and here they were, and he felt strangely calm.

He glanced out, past Silver, through the open door at the fields beyond, the dark stretch of unclouded night, the curved sliver of moon hinged upon the sky. There was no one to see; his gaze flickered back to Silver, and he reached out and brushed his fingers against Silver’s cheek. When Silver did not flinch or move away, but raised his hand to cover Flint’s, Flint stepped toward him and kissed him, gently.

This thing between them was still so new, and Flint marvelled at it.

His heart beat a little faster as he kissed Silver; the door was open and if anyone was out there, they would see. No one was. But still, the slim possibility that someone might be made Flint nervous and thrilled all at once, the way he once had whenever Thomas kissed him by a window, when he had been so afraid that someone might look up and see them through the glass.

He pulled away, but his hand still rested on Silver’s cheek.

“There’s your answer,” he said, softly, looking into Silver’s blue eyes. He thumbed the blood on Silver’s temple. “I’ll heat some water so I can clean us up.”

He walked back out of the house and drew some water from the well, and he heaved the full bucket back inside and closed the door behind him. Silver was crouched by the fireplace, trying to kindle the hearth. Flint resisted the urge to say, _Let me do that_ , and he left Silver to it.

He set the bucket down on the floor beside Silver, and he looked around. Still the teacups sat silently on their sides.

“It’s a nice place,” Silver commented, as the flame began to crackle slowly.

It had been nice, Flint supposed, to be able to call this place home, once. Was it still possible to make a home of it again? The ghost of Miranda did not haunt him so often anymore, but everything here still held precious echoes of her. Looking back, being able to leave London behind and start a new life at such a great physical distance from that city had played no small part in rescuing him from yet more abysmal depths of grief over the loss of Thomas. It had made it easier for him to be buoyed by anger instead of drowned in sorrow.

“Miranda made it so,” he said, pouring most of the water into a pot to boil above the fire.

Silver stood up, a hand against the wall for support as he did. “I cannot imagine you are not also responsible for what this place is.”

“It is good,” Flint said, “to have a home.”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that,” Silver said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever truly had a home.”

Flint’s heart cracked to hear that; for all the tragedy that he had suffered, he had always counted himself lucky to have known and loved Thomas and Miranda, to have found belonging with them, however briefly. To have had a corner of London which was his, a small room with four walls that had witnessed him and Thomas making love and talking and laughing and reading to each other. To have had this place in Nassau, a fixed point where he could return, where Miranda would tirelessly cook and wash and clean and sew, all the chores that the Hamiltons once had servants for; where the two of them would quarrel and fuck and cry and cling desperately to each other.

“Do you think about what it would be like to have one?” Flint asked, laying a hand on Silver’s arm.

“Sometimes,” Silver said.

“How do you envision it?” Flint ran his hand down Silver’s arm to touch Silver’s hand. 

“A wife,” Silver said. “Children running around. I never gave it much thought. It was merely an ideal impressed upon me by the world at large.”

Flint curled his lips in amusement. He wondered, momentarily, what Silver was like with children. “Do you suppose it’ll ever happen?”

“There’s little point in wondering,” Silver said, lightly. “For me, the fight to stay alive from one day to the next is enough.”

Flint could almost agree—and this in itself was surprising, considering that less than two months ago, he had found even the notion of staying alive from one day to the next exhausting to contemplate and he had been ready to give it up at any moment. But beyond that, beyond the simple struggle for survival, Flint had always yearned for safe harbour. 

He tugged on Silver’s hand to draw him close, and he kissed Silver. Silver’s mouth opened under his, and Flint took all that he could from the kiss until the pot of water beside them hissed and bubbled.

Flint broke the kiss; Silver’s lips glistened, red and wet, in the firelight.

“Go into the bedroom and make yourself comfortable,” Flint said.

“Aye, Captain,” Silver said, with a teasing smirk, and Flint felt an odd rush of pleasure at the way Silver called him _Captain_ ; he wanted to grab him and kiss him again, but he watched as Silver lit a candle in the fire and walked down the corridor with it, and he let Silver open each door and explore before disappearing into the bedroom.

* * *

Silver shrugged off his jacket and folded it over a chair by the bed. He unbuttoned his trousers and pulled the hem of his long shirt out of them, lifting the shirt over his head and off, placing it over the jacket. He sat down on the bed and ran his hand over the smooth covering of it as he used his other hand to wrench his boot off his foot, wondering at all the things Flint might have done with Miranda Barlow in this bed.

At that moment, Flint came in, and bent to set a basin down by Silver’s feet. He crouched by it and was pulling a rag out of the soapy water and wringing it when Silver put a hand over his and said, “I can do this myself.”

“I want to do it,” Flint said hoarsely, looking up at Silver. His face was clean of blood; he must have washed it just then. “Let me.”

Silver was disarmed by the honest desire that he saw in Flint’s eyes, and he removed his hand from Flint’s after a moment. Flint raised the cloth to Silver’s face and wiped the crusted blood off it. He kissed Silver once, then twice, as he dropped the cloth to clean Silver’s neck, gliding it ever so slowly along the underside of Silver’s jaw and around Silver’s shoulders, and Silver knew he was growing half-hard at the feeling of it, damp and deliberate, almost like a tongue.

He winced as Flint passed softly along a shallow graze at the top of Silver’s right arm, but Flint kept kissing him and the unbearably tender path that the cloth traced over his body made him shiver with wanting.

Flint rinsed the rag; the water was just tinted pink. He lifted it again to clean Silver’s chest and abdomen, avoiding the dressed wound in Silver’s side, where he had been slashed, deeply, by a knife two days before.

Silver could have died; they both could have.

But they were not dead.

Flint pressed kisses to Silver’s chest, and Silver could not understand this man in the slightest. He was so ridiculously, impossibly gentle right now; so fierce and terrifying in battle; so impassive and closed off to everyone else. 

Flint put a hand over the unbuttoned top of Silver’s trousers. He looked at Silver with a question in his eyes. Silver nodded and shifted his weight so Flint could draw the trousers down and off.

His cock grew softer again as Flint’s eyes fell upon his iron leg and the stump of his real leg; he still hated the sight of it, so ugly and useless, a reminder of so much pain. Flint unstrapped the iron leg and put it to the side, and Silver kept having to look away.

Then he felt the warm cloth on the stump of his leg, and Flint was carefully laving it, soft as a whisper. It ached, as it usually did, but the way Flint treated it, his hot gaze caressing it as much as the cloth was, the ache almost became something not just bearable but good.

Flint lowered his mouth to Silver’s knee, just above where Silver’s left leg ended, and kissed it very wetly, wetter than the soaked cloth. His beard scratched the awfully sensitive pink flesh that was close to where Silver’s leg stopped, and Silver felt _wild_ with the agonising pleasure that it gave him.

A keen noise arose in his throat. His cock was painfully stiff now, and he wanted—he wanted Flint to put his mouth around it very, very badly.

Flint raised his eyes to Silver’s. He was smiling, as if he knew just what Silver was thinking, and the idea of Silver’s cock in his mouth made him perfectly happy.

Three days ago, Silver had kissed Flint for the first time in his cabin, no longer able to deny this thing that had been simmering between them; he had been afraid that Flint would jerk away, would swear at him, would fly into a rage—Flint was unpredictable, at the best of times. But Flint did not do any of those things; he had stiffened for a moment and then simply melted, sagged his shoulders, sighed into Silver’s mouth as if he had finally been allowed to set down a crushing burden.

They had had no time—that was partly why Silver had chosen that moment to kiss Flint, so that whatever consequences came of it, they would have to resolve them immediately or set them aside till later. But when Flint began to return his kiss in earnest, Silver wished—oh, how he _wished_ —he had chosen a better moment when they could have let the kiss stretch on into infinity, when they could have done more than kiss.

Flint was very, very good at kissing, and he kissed Silver with heat and fire and with heavy, fearless intent: it was not the first time Flint had kissed a man. That much was clear to Silver, who had never thought of any man in the way that he had been thinking of Flint of late.

Since that kiss, Silver and Flint had managed to steal only the briefest of moments alone together. When the panic and havoc had ceased, and all the smoke cleared, Flint had invited Silver to stay the night in this house, and Silver had known that he was offering something beyond a night of sleep and rest. He had said yes.

So here they were. Flint knelt before Silver, looking up at him with so much elation in his eyes, a look that said that there were many things he wanted to do to Silver and that he did not know which option to settle upon, for they all gave him equal pleasure to ponder. It made Silver so thoroughly confused; it was incredibly difficult to reconcile this man on his knees before him with the fearsome pirate, the one men talked about in hushed, terrified tones.

 _Who are you?_ Silver wanted to ask. But he wasn’t sure if Flint knew the answer to that either.

Flint dipped the cloth into the water and this time, he brought it up to Silver’s flushed cock. He rubbed the head slowly with the warm, dripping cloth, and a moan escaped Silver. Flint hummed, clearly pleased; he wrapped the wet cloth around Silver’s cock and stroked it firmly up and down. Silver grasped the bedcover and Flint pumped Silver’s cock a few more times, hard and sure, before sliding the cloth down to Silver’s balls, massaging them very gently.

Silver thought he might be dreaming: no one had ever touched him like this, and he had never expected Captain James Flint, of all people, to do so.

“Turn around,” Flint murmured, slapping Silver’s thigh lightly. “Lie face down on the bed.”

“Are you going to fuck me?” Silver asked. The rules of this game seemed too different to that men played with women, and he did not know what to ask for, or what it was he really wanted.

Flint laughed: not unkindly, but with warmth. “I will in a while, if that’s what you’d like,” he said. “But just do as I say, and if you don’t like what I’m doing you can tell me to stop and I will.”

Silver did as Flint told him. He lay down flat on his front on the bed, and he felt Flint touch the cloth to his right foot, cleaning it briskly; and then, after wringing it out again, he swept the cloth up the length of the back of Silver’s right leg in the most leisurely manner. Silver had never given much thought to how sensitive the back of his leg might be, but it was, very.

He put his mouth to the bedcover, hoping it would swallow up some of the sounds he was making, but then Flint was following the path of the cloth with those stupidly wet and adoring kisses of his, and Silver groaned and breathed hard as if he’d been running, fast.

The cloth arrived at the top of Silver’s thigh, and Flint nudged Silver’s leg to the right; he put a hand on Silver’s left buttock and spread it. Silver felt horribly embarrassed but his cock was so fucking hard.

Silver heard the sound of the cloth being dragged through the water again, and then Flint put the drenched cloth there, between his buttocks, and he must have squeezed the cloth because Silver felt warm water running in rivulets onto his hole. Then Flint touched the cloth to it and rubbed circles around the outside of it, until he pressed the cloth _inside_ , still making steady circular motions with his thumb within, and Silver swore. “ _Fuck_.”

Then there was a splash; Silver turned around to see the cloth abandoned in the basin, and just in time he caught Flint’s glinting eye before Flint leaned forward and put his tongue to Silver’s hole.

Well. Silver may have thought the cloth somewhat like a tongue, but he was quite mistaken. It was nothing like the sensation of Flint’s tongue, the hot, firm press of it, flicking repeatedly up and down the outside of his hole, the panting breath that accompanied it. Silver was no longer even embarrassed; he was simply very fucking aroused. Flint started to kiss Silver’s hole as he might Silver’s mouth, and fuck if that wasn’t the best thing Silver had ever felt. He couldn’t think anymore. “Fuck,” he babbled. “Flint— Captain— for God’s sake.”

Flint paused. Damn him. “You’re very welcome to keep calling me that,” he said.

“What?” Silver asked, dazed and scrabbling to recall. “Captain?”

“Yes,” Flint said, and he was still not returning to the task he had started, but his thumb was rubbing, playfully, over Silver’s hole. 

“Fuck,” Silver said. “Will you go the fuck back to what you were doing, _Captain_?”

“That’s not very subordinate of you,” Flint said, with mock disapproval. But then his tongue was upon Silver again, and Silver exhaled with relief before breathing in sharply again as Flint licked a slow, solid line on the skin between Silver’s balls and his hole and he traced that path again and again with his tongue, vigorously. Silver’s hips stuttered as he thrust feebly against the bed; he wanted to touch his own aching cock but at the same time, he didn’t care to, not when he already felt this good.

Flint’s tongue was so fucking wet and hot, and his hands were kneading Silver’s buttocks and drawing them apart, and Silver was shivering with feverish want. Flint was licking and sucking at his hole, and Silver thought of Flint fighting earlier, bloodied and snarling and moving like lightning.

Now Flint was—moaning. Flint was moaning as he opened up Silver’s hole with his tongue, and Silver was absolutely fucked, even though Flint hadn’t even got his cock out yet. Silver was so fucked because he was never supposed to feel like this about anyone, let alone a man, let alone someone so difficult and unfathomable and violent as Flint, someone who could hold Silver’s life in his hands.

Silver was weak, and he was vulnerable, and he wanted it: he wanted the way Flint held him right now, he wanted this, Flint fucking him with his tongue, a tongue that knew how to weave together words that could compel and enchant better than a witch’s spell. Silver was trembling and Flint’s tongue was inside him, hard and insistent, and Silver rocked back onto it.

“I thought you were going to fuck me, Captain,” Silver said, raggedly. He was sweating all over and he’d barely been moving.

Flint chuckled, a warm sensation against Silver’s hole. “I don’t think we’ll get round to that tonight,” he pulled away to say, wryly. “And anyway, I _am_ fucking you, aren’t I?”

Silver cursed, but he had to agree. He turned his head; he could not see from his position on the bed, but he realised that Flint must have started touching himself with one hand while he held Silver open with the other.

Fuck, that made Silver shudder with delight. An hour ago, Silver might not have understood why anyone would enjoy doing what Flint was doing to him; but right now, he would have been more than happy to return the favour if Flint requested it, as long as Flint would just fucking continue.

And he did; Flint put his tongue back where Silver wanted it, but then his fingers were there too, one finger pushing long and slowly inwards as his tongue went below, dipped down to Silver’s balls and up again along the skin there.

It felt so good. Silver’s hole was slack from the work of Flint’s tongue and sopping wet with Flint’s spit and the water from the cloth; another finger slid in easily, and another, and Flint fucked Silver with three fingers, deep and fast, building into the most exquisite rhythm and pressure, and all the while he was lapping his tongue hard at the skin behind Silver’s balls. Silver had his eyes shut so tight all he could see was white while he rolled his hips and rubbed his cock against the bedcover, and Flint twisted his fingers inside and held his tongue unyielding against Silver’s skin, and Silver came, clawing at the white sheets.

When he opened his eyes, bright spots were still dancing around his vision. Flint had withdrawn his fingers. Silver rolled over languorously; his bones felt liquefied.

“You’ve made a fucking mess,” Flint said, standing up, holding the cloth in his left hand. Silver saw that Flint’s right hand was spattered with Flint’s own seed, and before Flint could wipe it clean, Silver sat up and grabbed Flint’s hand on pure instinct and licked it clean: it was salty and a little bitter, but not wholly unpleasant, and completely worth the expression on Flint’s face as he sucked Flint’s fingers into his mouth.

“Fuck,” Flint let out, heavy with lingering desire. “You—” He stopped, seemed exasperated, an expression Silver was used to seeing on Flint’s face, one that he often managed to elicit from Flint. But this was tinged with something else: fondness, all soft around the edges of Flint’s eyes.

It made Silver’s heart falter for a moment.

“I think you’ll find that _you_ made most of the mess with that sodding cloth of yours,” Silver said.

Flint shook his head and threw the cloth at Silver’s face.

* * *

Flint opened his eyes. The sunlight was warm on his skin. He felt well-rested, something that he had not felt in a long time. Beside him, Silver was still asleep, his wavy dark hair fallen over his face.

Flint got out of bed as quietly as he could, and padded out into the hallway. After a few minutes, he found what he was looking for, and he went back into the bedroom with it. He settled back into bed and flicked open the book.

Some time later, he heard Silver say, “What are you reading?”

Flint rustled through the pages to one of his favourite passages and read aloud: “Now from his breast into his eyes the ache of longing mounted, and he wept at last, his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms, longed for as the sunwarmed earth is longed for by a swimmer spent in rough water where his ship went down under Poseidon’s blows, gale winds and tons of sea. Few men can keep alive through a big surf to crawl, clotted with brine, on kindly beaches, in joy, in joy, knowing the abyss behind: and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms round him pressed as though forever.”

“Is that the _Odyssey_?” Silver asked, sitting up. 

“Yes,” Flint replied. “You’ve not read it?”

“No,” Silver said. “But I know the gist of it.”

Flint closed the book and set it down on the bed between him and Silver. “You ought to read it,” Flint said.

“Is that what _you_ imagine home to be?” Silver questioned, picking up the book.

Flint inclined his head in thought. Years ago, in London, he had entertained notions of growing old and grey with Thomas and Miranda. Even after he arrived in Nassau, before he received news of Thomas’ death, he had allowed himself to fantasise that they might be reunited one day. Then, he had spent a long time willing himself to accept the fact that home was Nassau, was this house, was Miranda without Thomas.

Flint had wanted to be Odysseus, to one day walk away from the sea till he found a land where no one knew anything of the blue, capricious ocean.

He knew that was not possible anymore; there seemed always to be another storm on the horizon, another war to win.

But last night had been a revelation, and this morning a treasure, to go to sleep and wake up by Silver’s side; all he knew was that he wanted as many nights and as many mornings like these as he could get. That was all he would demand of fate’s threads. Another night like the last, another morning like this one. More, more.

“I don’t want a wife, if that’s what you’re asking,” Flint said. He was quite aware that wasn’t what Silver was asking at all.

Silver laughed. “I don’t suppose you do,” he said. “But what _do_ you want?” His blue eyes were brimming with something like love, and Flint wondered if Silver knew it yet.

Flint leaned in and kissed him, one hand cupping Silver’s cheek, teeth biting at Silver’s bottom lip until he earned a gasp from Silver. He broke the kiss, looked straight at Silver, and said, “This is enough.”

Silver looked away, suddenly shy. No, he didn’t know it yet.

No matter. They had time.

Flint hoped they had time.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a Classics nerd; the passage from the Odyssey quoted in this fic is from a translation by Robert Fitzgerald, which is a relatively modern translation from 1961 and obviously could not have been read by Flint. I apologise for that. In the time of Black Sails, they would probably have been reading a translation by John Ogilby (published 1660); it looks like a beautiful edition with illustrations, but I don't have access to a copy so I can't use that! I would if I could, for maximum historical accuracy. But Fitzgerald's translation is a nice one nonetheless, even if extremely anachronistic. Do forgive me.
> 
> I always appreciate each and every comment. <3 And come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/)!


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